Steve's New Role at Apple: What Does the Board of Directors Do?

So Steve’s leaving us…but is he really? What does it mean to switch from being CEO to Chairman of the Board? In a large public company like Apple, the board is one part of the equation that controls the company--the shareholders are the other. The board generally acts in a more supervisorial capacity, and shareholders commonly grant their voting power to the board of directors in large blocks called proxies. Typically, directors have other day jobs, and at prominent companies like Apple, the directors are CEOs at other ginormous companies like Intuit, Genentech, J. Crew, and Avon. Oh, and one’s a former VP of the U.S., Al Gore.

In practice, the board guides the company from a big-picture perspective, vetting and approving budgets, answering to the stockholders on the company’s results, setting the goals that the CEO must accomplish, and more. The CEO is generally the more hands-on boss, acting as the head honcho for the high-level strategic and management decisions.

What does that mean for Apple? We’d have to bug a board meeting to find out, and we don’t want to get arrested like that. Our guess, though, is that it means Jobs will be less involved in the details and the hands-on management. As an example, Jobs--as part of the board--might direct the new CEO Tim Cook to get the iPad 4 out by March 2013. Cook would then work with the various VPs at Apple to shape the day-to-day execution of that of that plan to whatever level of detail he likes.